Reviewed: January 18, 2003
Reviewed by: Bertrand Lemon

Publisher
Midway

Developer
Midway

Released: November 18, 2002
Genre: Fighting
Players: 2
ESRB: Mature

9
8
4
8
8.0

Supported Features:

And while Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance may or may not be the primary reason for the GameCube’s most recent rethinking of their strategy – the fact still remains: This game was a powerhouse. This is the game that remanded Capcom to years of uninspired sequels for the select few who still cared about Ryu and Ken.

Of course, Midway is not above such tactics either, and while audiences were pretty receptive to Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3 was getting a little silly, and by the time Mortal Kombat 4 came out, despite much bragging about the unheard of polycount and new-fangled combat tactics, the empire had faded.

Now, only in passing will I mention some of the lesser-known journeys Raiden has embarked upon, as I’m sure you’d rather not think too much about Mortal Kombat Gold, Mortal Kombat Special Forces, Mortal Kombat Mythologies (single player Mortal Kombat? WTF?), the second Mortal Kombat movie, and (fortunately, I only know about this because of a fan site) Mortal Kombat: The Series. So how in the hell am I going to make you believe that a new product with these two words on it could possibly be a good thing?

Do. Just do.

A lot’s changed since MK’s glory days. The genre of one-on-one fighting games has slimmed down substantially, 3-D fighting is a standard all but enforced by military police, metaphysical special moves are out, and 30 button combos are in. To that end, this game had to make a lot of concessions to get into this market at all. They did, and Deadly Alliance is an odd mutation of different fighting games that really works in the end.

All of the 20 unique fighters, in addition to having an alternate costume (which almost always means more skin) have three fighting styles: two hand-to-hand, and one with a weapon. This is the feature that Midway has boasted about the most, and with good reason, I suppose. While games like Bushido Blade would offer high or low stances, all that really equated to was that the triangle button would swipe instead of stab. The fighting styles in Deadly Alliance vary wildly – sometimes to silly extremes. Bo’ Rai Cho’s “Drunken Fist” has him thrashing about when standing still, and walking like Uncle Joe (he’s-a moving kinda slow), but change “Drunken Fist” to “Mi Zong”, and he sobers into a more straightforward (although still a bit silly) fighting style. Likewise, Reptile’s “Hung Gar” seems standard, but change it to “Crab”, and he scuttles around like a… well, like a crab. Johnny Cage has a pretty basic combination of Karate and Jeet Kune Do, while Shang Tsung appears to have lost his mind with Snake and Crane. The styles are all versatile, and with the obvious exception of “Netherealm”, they’re all real, if maybe a bit exaggerated. Now consider that each of these 20 unique fighters all have their own individual weapons, and all of them use their weapons differently, and you’ve got a broad base for some excellent fighting, I’d say.

Control of your fighter works with the D-pad (no, you can’t use analog unless you cheat with the Mad Catz controller, and that doesn’t work very well) and four buttons. L1 changes stance, R1 performs throws, taunts and the like, and R2 blocks. Get to know that R2 button, you’re gonna be the best of friends.

Of course, there’s an Arcade mode, your best bet early on is Konquest, where you can earn Koins (also called Kredits) to use in the Krypt to unlock Koffins, which allows you to view Koncept Art and other such Kontent. Personally, all of this nonsense was making me a little Krazy.

All kidding aside, you’re still going to want to start out your experience with this game in Konquest mode. This is what actually takes you through the basics of the game. Sure, this sounds rather useless – you know how fighting games work, and you’ll find the moves you like, or you’ll just spaz out on the controller. But because every fighting style is different, it takes a while to figure out what each button does. Triangle could mean slap, hard punch, high kick, or slice, depending on what style you’re using.

Konquest starts out with 8 general lessons, and then moves on to 10 specific lessons for each fighter. The first couple are pretty basic – low kicks and throws, then moves into special moves, and then onto combos. Simple three button combos at first, and then into ridiculously involved 12 button combos requiring you to switch styles twice. For my money, these get way too complex. Since the timing is just as important as the sequence, I would spend ten minutes trying to perform a specified combo, and that’s with the opponent standing still, and me staring at the button sequence on the screen. It seems unrealistic that I’d adapt that to a real fight, especially knowing that it’s worth about 35% health.

These lessons are also the best way to earn K…er, coins, which you’ll be needing. Unlocking fighters, costume alternates, extra arenas, and lots and lots of development material means opening a coffin. All of these coffins have two letters on them, and all of these letters go from A to Z. In case you don’t feel like opening your little calculator app, that means 676 different coffins, all with their own price. Of course, in that mess lies the small handful that you actually care about, and the rest of them have drawings, 3-D test renderings, behind-the-scenes photos, more coins, hints on what’s in other coffins, and then there’s empty coffins as well.

This isn’t really a problem though, because after you open up the fifth coffin containing a preliminary sketch of Scorpion, you’re going to end up looking for a guide to tell you what to open to find the good stuff. You can buy one if you like, but there’s plenty of them on the net.

Unless you’re way into it, there’s very few of these bonus materials that have any real interest. Game developers and humor is usually a bad combination. The only thing that doesn’t come from inside a coffin is one of the two hidden fighters. Best that these two don’t gather too much attention though, as they are the only ones slapped together from others.

Deadly Alliance also offers a descent selection of mini-games. You have the classic button mashing of “test your might”, and the new shell game of “test your sight” (think: bonus round from Tapper). Successful completion of these mini-games means earning coins, and making it more difficult. For me, this was an unwelcome break to have every 4 rounds, but since this number is adjustable, I turned them off completely.

On a final note, as long as I’ve had my memory card, I’ve never encountering anything resembling a bad sector, but if it could happen, this game would do it. Deadly Alliance auto-saves incessantly, and while I’ve gotten no indication of any problem because of this, it did make me raise an eyebrow. I was pleased to see that MKDA plays as fast as it does. You’ll see a loading screen before each match, lesson and mini-game, and 5 seconds is about as long as you’ll see it.

A complaint here comes from the fact that although the arenas look good, they’re almost purely ornamental. There are a couple places where you can knock your opponent into statues, pillars or stalagmites, but no matter where you are, you’re always contained in a circle, surrounded by an invisible wall. Not only does this mean you can’t knock people into the acid bath you see just over the horizon, but also – there’s little interaction possible with the walls themselves. You can kick people into these walls, but essentially what you have is a line in the sand you cannot cross.

You shouldn’t be surprised to find out that you’ll be seeing a lot of blood. A lot of blood. Crazy-mad-stupid-blood. More blood than a human could possibly have blood. Original Hellraiser movie blood. To give an example of exactly how much blood we’re talking about one of the Konquest missions involves making Sonja bleed 80 pints of blood in 60 seconds. Think about that. Last time you went to a bar, you had a pint of beer. Now think of 80 of those, from a human body, in one minute. That’s the kind of blood we’re talking about here. Of course, you can turn down the amount of blood, but you won’t. So try poking somebody in the eye, and watch it really squirt out. Or my personal favorite – impale someone through the chest. You won’t be able to use your sword anymore that round, but as you fight, your enemy’s life gauge slowly drips away onto their feet. The blood actually runs down their face, legs and arms too, which I think is neat.

Blood out of the way, I suppose you’d like me to tell you about the fatalities. Truth be told, they’ve taken a bit of focus off the fatalities in this installment. Each fighter has but one fatality, and there’s a complete absence of Babalities (which were stupid), Animalities (which were also stupid) and Friendships (which were funny in concept, at least). The fatalities themselves are more comic than they are gruesome. Not that any of them are particularly funny, but the over-the-top way that inhuman events take place; such as Cage hitting you in the balls, punching through your skull, and removing your brain, or Quan Chi jumping on your shoulders, and pulling on your head until your neck is the length of a giraffe’s – these all come off as a lot more silly than they do violent. Where you would expect to find blood, you find about eight times as much. Where you would expect to find bile, organs, and bone fragments, you find indecipherable pieces of meat – like throw away scraps on the slaughterhouse floor. As with most of the game, realism is a factor, just not a primary one.

The three most recent Midway games I’ve played have been this one, MLB High Heat 2003 and Spy Hunter, and each of them has been dotted by another faceless group of chuckleheads doing their damndest to try to look hardcore whilst covering the theme from Peter Gunn or singing about baseball. Enter: Adema. They’ve got goatees, their “logo” is the flammable symbol, and their album is titled “Insomniac’s Dream”, so we’ve established - this is a clever faceless group of chuckleheads.

Alright, I’m done talking about the band, except to say that I’m taking the score for sound down a couple notches for this offense, which is unfair of me, since Adema doesn’t actually show up in the game, but I am sick of this shit. Stop it.

That said, the in-game music is pretty regular fare. The minimalist music score just gives a little atmosphere, all the ughs, oohs and aahs are in there, as well as screams when something particularly dastardly happens, and of course – the evil guy who says “Sub-Zero Wins”, “Fatality”, “Finish Him!” and the like. All fairly rote and expected, although the sound of blood hitting the floor was a nice touch.

The best soundset is actually attributed to Cyrax (the robot). He makes all sorts of whirring and short-circuiting noises, and when the saw comes out of his chest, it’s pretty crisp. He even hits the ground with a different, heavier thud, which is good.

But with any fighting game, what’s really important is playing against other people, and that’s where this thing has it in spades. The way the fighting is worked out, a little more complex than Tekken Tag, yet more simple than Virtua Fighter 4, the complete absence of any sort of super-moves, and the ability to pause and look at any move you might want to do, makes for a pretty balanced playing field. My roommate is a lot less versed in video games than I am, and I already had the advantage of completing about 160 of those lessons when she agreed to play, so I figured when she sat down in my room, she’d be battered and crying.

And yeah- I let up a little bit, and yeah- I still beat her, but not nearly as badly as I expected I would. After figuring out what button does what and where the block button was, one player’s advantage over another’s is a lot slimmer than other games usually make it. Of course, if I was more sporting, I would have given her a handicap, which you can do at the versus screen, as well as selecting an arena and betting.

Now, betting means setting down a mutually agreed upon amount of coins, and to the victor go the spoils. And while this a great idea in theory, it’s tough to work it out so it really matters in practice. But eventually she did a couple lessons and we started betting 25 jade coins on the match, just for the experience.